Music at MIT Oral History Project

Jeanne Bamberger

Interviewed

by

Forrest Larson

May 27, 2005

Interview no. 1

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Lewis Music Library

ii

Transcribed by: University of Connecticut, Center for

Oral History, Tapescribe, from the audio recording

Transcript Proof Readers: Lois Beattie, Jennifer Peterson

Transcript Editor: Forrest Larson

©2011 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Lewis Music Library, Cambridge, MA

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Table of Contents

1. Family and early musical experience (00:00—CD1 00:00) ....................................... 1 Family’s roots—Minneapolis Symphony—first piano teachers—Emil Jacques-Dalcroze—Gabriel

Fenyves

2. Beginning serious piano study (14:10—CD1 14:10) ...................................................4 Lessons with Gabriel Fenyves—attending concerts—studies with Joanna Graudan— the idea of

reverence for the score—first public performances 3. Philosophy studies, music theory with E. Křenek (28:33—CD1 28:33) .....................8

University of Minnesota— philosophy studies with Herbert Feigl and Wilfrid Sellers—

counterpoint and analysis with Ernst Křenek—master’s thesis—introduction to twentieth-century

music—Louis Krasner 4. Piano studies with A. Schnabel, other philosophy studies (45:20—CD2 00:00) ......12

Playing for Rudolf Serkin—study of philosophy at Columbia University—Artur Schnabel’s

teaching—understanding the score—phrase structure—composer and performer intentions—

Beethoven’s fingerings— autonomy of art—“New Criticism” theory in literature—Therese

Behr——Erich Itor Kahn

5. Concerto movement by Johann Joseph Rösler, formerly attributed to Beethoven

(1:22:35—CD2 31:15) ...............................................................................................21 Finding the piece—performance—composing the cadenza— the piece not by Beethoven

6. Study with R. Sessions (1:28:37—CD2 00:37:17) .....................................................23 Study with Roger Sessions—musical analysis—faithfulness to the score—intuition—complexity in

music—twelve tone music

7. Performing contemporary music, visit with A. Schoenberg (1:32:34—

CD2 0:57:17) ............................................................................................................28 Schoenberg’s Ode to Napoleon— George Barati—David Boyden—Leland Smith—Vincent

Duckles— master’s degree—visiting Arnold Schoenberg—Richard Hoffman—Manfred Bukhofzer

Note on timing notations:

Recording of this interview can be found either as one continuous file or as split up

over two audio CDs. Timings are designated in chapter headings in both formats, with

the timing on the full file preceding the timing on the CD version.

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Contributors

Jeanne Bamberger (b. 1924) is Professor Emerita of Music and Urban Education at

MIT. She taught music theory and music cognition at MIT 1971-2005. A student of

pianist Artur Schnabel, she has performed extensively as soloist and in chamber

music ensembles. She studied music theory with composers Ernst Křenek and Roger

Sessions. Her research interests include musical development and learning in both

children and adults. Among her many publications are the books The Mind Behind the

Musical Ear (1995) and Developing Musical Intuitions (2000).

Forrest Larson, Library Assistant at the Lewis Music Library, has attended training

workshops in oral history methodology and practice at Simmons College and by the

Society of American Archivists, and is a member of the Oral History Association. He

is also an active composer and violist.

Interview conducted by Forrest Larson on May 27, 2005, in the MIT Lewis Music

Library. Duration of the audio recording is 1:55.55. First of two interviews. Second

interview: June 7, 2005.

Music at MIT Oral History Project

The Lewis Music Library’s Music at MIT Oral History Project was established in

1999 to document the history of music at MIT. For over 100 years, music has been a

vibrant part of the culture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This history

covers a wide variety of genres, including orchestral, chamber, and choral musical

groups, as well as jazz, musical theater, popular and world music. Establishment of a

formal music program in 1947 met the growing needs for professional leadership in

many of the performing groups. Shortly thereafter, an academic course curriculum

within the Division of Humanities was created. Over the years, the music faculty and

alumni have included many distinguished performers, composers and scholars.

Through in-depth recorded audio interviews with current and retired MIT music

faculty, staff, former students, and visiting artists, the Music at MIT Oral History

Project is preserving this valuable legacy for the historical record. These individuals

provide a wealth of information about MIT. Furthermore, their professional lives and

activities are often historically important to the world at large. Audio recordings of all

interviews are available in the MIT Lewis Music Library.

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1. Family and early musical experience. (00:00–CD1 00:00)

FORREST LARSON: I’m delighted to have Jeanne Bamberger for an interview. Today is

May 27th, 2005. We’re in the Lewis Music Library; I’m Forrest Larson. Jeanne

Bamberger is Professor of Music and Urban Education at MIT. Just to start off, can

you say when you were born, and where, and all that?

JEANNE BAMBERGER: All right, I’ll reveal that. I was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota,

and I was born on February 11th, 1924. [laughs] There you have it!

FL: So, interviewees in the past have not actually just given the date, just the year!

[laughs] Good! Tell me about some of your family roots, your parents and

grandparents, and all that.

JB: Okay. My maternal grandparents came from Romania, in probably the 1870s or

1880s, something like that. And my paternal grandparents came from I think

Lithuania, but maybe Poland; I’m not sure.

FL: Was this on the East Coast or the West Coast?

JB: Well, interesting. My father’s parents went to New York. Brooklyn. No—I guess my

father was born on Delancey Street in lower Manhattan. But they came to

Minneapolis quite early because my grandfather had asthma, and Minneapolis was

supposed to be healthy. So they came to Minneapolis then, and my grandfather had a

pawn shop in the raunchiest part of town.

FL: [laughs]

JB: [laughs] And so my father was born in this country. My mother’s father came to

Minneapolis directly, and he came because there was somebody in Minneapolis who

was running a butter and egg business and needed young men to go in a horse and

buggy, and travel them around the city selling the stuff. He came by himself, and then

he brought his—I don’t think they were married yet—but his then-to-be wife. And

she proceeded to bring all of her relatives. And he, including—he brought his father,

who was the Reverend Ossius Colbert [name unverified], I guess one of the first

rabbis in Minneapolis—

FL: Oh my!

JB: —and a very distinguished gentleman, spoke many languages, as did my grandfather.

And then my grandfather, my mother’s father, began peddling all through that, into

North Dakota, and ended up buying, creating, a general store in Hankinson, North

Dakota. And that’s where she grew up, my mother. And he had a very successful

store, including being the medium, or something, between the farmers in North

Dakota, and particularly General Mills [Company], the big city stuff, because

Hankinson was a railroad stop. And I used to go and visit them in North Dakota, and

the most exciting part was watching the trains, particularly the guy who weighed

stuff, because he had a wooden leg!

FL: [laughs] Wow!

JB: [laughs] And this huge scale! And so we liked to play there. But then came the

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Depression and everything went kaflooey. He left, they left Hankinson and moved

back to Minneapolis. But they lived in Minneapolis in a big house. My mother had

seven brothers and sisters. So that was that family. The other family was, actually,

that grandfather died when I was quite young. But his wife, my grandmother Shapiro,

lived, despite all of her physical problems. And she was—she didn’t read or write; she

was illiterate. She came to this country when she was twelve and went into a tobacco-

rolling, cigar-rolling plant. And she was just a tremendously powerful and smart

woman, and all of the progeny look like her! [laughs]

FL: [laughs]

JB: All the cousins, everybody, including my grandchildren.

FL: Were there any musicians among those?

JB: On my mother’s side of the family there were some fairly crazy people who were—

one of them played the organ for the silent movies in the theater in Minneapolis. And

another one—and I think she did some composing. That family, they were

entertainers, and they were very funny.

FL: So what was the organist’s name?

JB: Her name was Gert Goldstein! [laughs]

FL: Aha.

JB: And she was—that whole family, that whole Goldstein family was, they were very

funny, and very entertaining, and probably somewhat suspect in their lives. I don’t

really know.

FL: Uh-huh.

JB: That was it; there was no other music anywhere, certainly not on my father’s side of

the family.

FL: Wow, wow! How many siblings do you have?

JB: One brother, who became a doctor like my father. My mother, by the way, got a

degree in child welfare at the University of Minnesota, which was all quite amazing,

that she insisted on going to the university and continued on—had a wonderful

nursery school in our house. And my father was a pediatric cardiologist, who did that.

My brother was a radiologist. And that’s the family, that’s the immediate family.

FL: Where did some of your musical interests come from? Your parents probably liked

music?

JB: There wasn’t that much music in the house. When I was four, just turning five, my

parents, my father—my parents went, but my father went to Vienna to specialize in

internal medicine, after having been a general practitioner. And I remember a lot of

things about it, but one of the things I remember was that there was somebody who,

some kid practicing the Minuet in G [by J. S. Bach] every morning, and I really

wanted to play that piece!

FL: [laughs]

JB: But I had already started taking piano lessons when I was four, so when I came back I

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continued. And somebody decided that I was gifted, or whatever you call it. So from

the very beginning I was getting out of school early and being treated like some kind

of a specimen of some sort.

FL: So what was the—do you know why you started playing piano?

JB: My mother decided, and my mother was pushing it. I practiced fifteen minutes every

morning before I went to school, and when I came back from school I had to practice

again. And she—I think from my studies of prodigies, there was always a person, a

father or a mother or a teacher who was on the back of the kid. And making their life

miserable and pushing all of that. But it was never a question of: I love to do this. It

was just that I had to do this.

FL: Mm-hm. Did your family go to concerts very often?

JB: Yes, I got [coughs] the Minneapolis Symphony [Orchestra], which was quite

extraordinary. Mitropoulos was the conductor [Dimitri Mitropoulos, MSO Music

Director, 1937–1949]. And every Friday night, there was a symphony concert, and I

went to those concerts from the time I was very little with my parents. I don’t

remember going to any other concerts, but those, that was a regular thing, and I still

know the kind of literature that was—I know the symphony literature from those

days. No, I mean, I recognize things. And besides that, Mitropoulos played a lot of

contemporary music, which of course the assembled multitudes hated. And then,

when I was at the University of Minnesota, the orchestra, the Minneapolis Symphony,

the hall where they played and rehearsed was on the campus. So I spent more time

going to the rehearsals than in my classes, I think, during the first two years. Well,

even after that.

FL: Wow!

JB: So that was where I got a really important education, was listening to those

rehearsals.

FL: Were there any piano recitals or anything that you heard as a youngster, or chamber

music concerts?

JB: I don’t think I knew what chamber music was! [laughs] Later on, when Joanna

Graudan came, and her husband Nikolai [Graudan] was the principal cellist—came to

be the principal cellist [of the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra]. And then, I

remember she got me playing with some singers. I thought singers were very silly.

FL: Uh-huh. [laughs]

JB: But I did that, but nothing else. Except, of course, I went to all their concerts, the

cello-piano thing. That way I really learned the cello literature. But I don’t remember,

when I was little, I certainly didn’t go to any concerts at all. [laughs]

FL: [laughs] So your first piano teacher was a neighborhood piano teacher. What was her

name?

JB: Margaret Carlson. And she had studied with [Emil] Jacques-Dalcroze [1865-1950],

which I think had—I think that was a big influence, because she had all of her piano

students, she would invite them to her house on Saturday mornings and do Dalcroze

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stuff [Ed. Note: probably referencing eurythmics]. And I think that was a big

important influence, that whole thing.

FL: How long did you study with her?

JB: Well, until she died of tuberculosis; probably until I was six or seven.

FL: Is there any lasting thing, besides the Dalcroze influence, that you remember from

her?

JB: Well, I don’t really remember her, except that she wrote an article, with the help of

my mother, on how to get kids to practice, and the whole relationship around

practicing and parents. It was in Good Housekeeping magazine. And at the head of

the article is a picture of me looking very serious.

FL: [laughs]

JB: Which I have.

FL: Tell me about some of the other teachers you had as a youngster.

JB: Well, then there was Lavillian Jones, who took over from Margaret Carlson. She was,

you know, the ordinary neighborhood piano teacher. But by that time I was being

made a fuss over. And I remember, when I asked her, “What’s this big fuss? Why is

everybody, why are you doing this?” and she said, “You’ve got good hands.” [laughs]

Okay. But you know, at that point there were the usual yearly recitals of all the kids

who were taking lessons with her, and I was always the big star. So, that was—and I

don’t remember anything about her teaching.

FL: Do you remember what you were playing at the time?

JB: Well, no, I don’t. I don’t even remember—I don’t remember any exercise books. The

Maiden’s Wish. I don’t know what that is, but that comes to mind! [laughs] [Ed. note:

possibly referring to a transcription for piano (after Chopin, Op. 71/1, Chants

polonais No. 1)]

2. Beginning serious piano study. (14:10–CD1 14:10)

FL: [laughs] So there’s two other teachers that you mentioned to me previously: Joanna

Graudan—and you mentioned her just a minute ago—and then Gabriel Fenyves.

JB: Fenyves.

FL: Yeah. So tell me when you studied with them, and are there some other people we’re

missing, too?

JB: Well, Fenyves was the great piano teacher in Minneapolis at that point. So when I

graduated from Lavillian Jones, I was sent to him. He was Hungarian. And I don’t

think he was much of a teacher. But I think I was still studying with him when I

played with the local school orchestra—not the public school, but there was a music

school called the McPhail Music School. Which, by the way, David Deveau [MIT

Senior Lecturer in Music, pianist] taught at! [laughs]

FL: No kidding! [laughs]

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JB: And they had a little orchestra, a student orchestra, and I think I played a Mozart

concerto or something with that orchestra when I was—well, I studied with him until

Joanna Graudan showed up, fortunately. And then, I must have been thirteen or

fourteen when she appeared.

FL: Do you remember which Mozart concerto?

JB: No. But I know that when I began studying with her, I—that was a whole other order

of magnitude. She had been a student of Schnabel [Artur Schnabel, 1882-1951], in

Germany, and her husband [Nikolai Graudan] was the assistant principal cellist in the

Berlin Philharmonic [Orchestra]. And they left—they fled, really—on the day when

Hitler came to hear the Berlin Philharmonic and everybody was supposed to—the

orchestra was supposed to—stand up and say, “Heil, Hitler!” And he refused, and that

was the end. They left the next day, or something.

FL: Wow!

JB: And they first went to London, and then they went to New York. And finally he got

the job in Minneapolis, which was very fortunate for me because then I began to have

a really—I began to understand something about musicians and the musical culture.

And she really became my kind of substitute mother, they—or my substitute parents.

I spent a lot of time in their house. I listened to them practicing. I went to all their

concerts. And she was the one who connected me up with [Ernst] Křenek [1900-1991,

composer] because she made—she asked. Křenek would come and talk about the

music that we were studying. She also got her collected students to play all of the

WTC, the Well-Tempered Clavier [by J. S. Bach], from beginning to end. I remember

playing the B-minor one, particularly. So that was the studying of—those were my

piano teachers, until Schnabel.

FL: Joanna Graudan—did she also give recitals in the area, solo recitals? And did she

have a performing career?

JB: She had a big performing career with her husband. They were an established duo. She

also played with the Minneapolis Symphony [Orchestra]. She played the [Felix]

Mendelssohn Rondo something or other—Brilliant? [Rondo Brilliant in E-flat major

for piano and orchestra, Op. 29] And I think some other...she also played some other

concerto, but I remember that one in particular. She didn’t play—I don’t remember

her playing solo recitals, but she played, she and her husband played, you know, all

the big cello-piano literature.

FL: What’s her husband’s first name?

JB: Nikolai.

FL: Nikolai, okay.

JB: He was from Latvia, originally, and she was from Russia.

FL: When you were growing up, did you play any other instruments or sing in a choir or

anything like that?

JB: It was really barren, as far as music was concerned. I had a ukulele! [laughs]

FL: Oh, my.

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JB: A neighbor gave me a ukulele and showed me a few chords!

FL: [laughs] Wow! Now you were saying earlier that you, the Minneapolis Symphony

performed contemporary music. Do you remember, was it—to you, was there

something unusual or special about that? Or was it something, just part of when you

went to concerts?

JB: Well, it didn’t really begin to happen—the first conductor of the Minneapolis

Symphony that I heard was Eugene Ormandy [MSO Music Director, 1931-1936].

And then, and he didn’t, I don’t remember any contemporary music there, but there

may have been some. Frankly, I think when I was so little I probably slept through

half the concerts! But it was when Mitropoulos came, and that was much later. I don’t

know exactly when he came, but I think it was when I was already—well, certainly

when I began studying with Joanna Graudan, because it was Mitropoulos who invited

him [Nikolai Graudan] to come. So—but I didn’t really become aware of

contemporary music until later—I think probably when I was in high school. And

then, I was going to say it was when I began going to the rehearsals, but I wasn’t

going to the rehearsals when I was in high school. I think it was probably already

when I was in college and going to the rehearsals that I got interested in

contemporary music.

FL: So you hadn’t been studying a contemporary piano repertoire before then?

JB: Nothing. I think, really, mostly I played, you know, not very interesting stuff.

FL: Uh-huh.

JB: Every once in a while I hear something and realize, oh yeah, I played that at some

point or other. But it’s all kind of a blank. The first thing, yeah, I was already studying

with Hansi—she was called Hansi Graudan. I played the [Robert] Schumann, “A

minor Piano Concerto” [Op. 54] with that little orchestra when I was probably in high

school—when I was in eleventh grade, or something like that. And I also played, with

another student of hers, the Mozart two-piano concerto—E-flat concerto [Piano

Concerto in E-flat for two pianos, K316a].

FL: Oh, my.

JB: And then, I gave solo recitals when I was in high school. I don’t remember much of

what I played. I remember the Mendelssohn, Serious Variations [in D minor, Op. 54].

[laughs] And not much more. There was that whole Well-Tempered Clavier thing. But

I studied a lot of music with her.

FL: What are some of the, kind of musical values that you learned from her, that have

stayed with you?

JB: Well, I suppose the most important was this total reverence for the score. You had to

try to do what the composer wanted. You were supposed to—that was supposed to be

knowable. [laughs] But you were supposed to be absolutely true to the score. I

remember much later talking about improvising, and she thought improvising was

terrible!

FL: [laughs]

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JB: Because somewhere or other I began—and I still do—when I’m working on a piece

and there’s some part that I’m having trouble with understanding or playing or

something, I’ll start improvising around it, so that the thing the composer wrote is one

possible, one possibility, among many. And I play around with all of them, then I

come back to the real one and it makes—and then I can begin to understand what the

problem was. But she was absolutely reverent when it came to the score. And then,

she gave me, I remember, the Brahms exercise—Brahms wrote a book of piano

exercises [51 Exercises, Woo6].

FL: I didn’t know that! Wow!

JB: Fifty-one exercises. And they’re very good, and I did a lot of those. She also gave me

other technical stuff, ways of practicing scales and arpeggios, and nobody had ever

done that before. And I played much more repertoire: Chopin and Beethoven and

Bach and Schumann, and Brahms—the whole works. She really—the most important

thing she did was to introduce me to the real piano literature.

FL: Did you do any Debussy?

JB: Yes, “Clair de Lune”! [laughs] I think that was—yes, I’m sure that that was, because I

remember when I went to Europe on the Fulbright, there was an initial interview, and

they asked me had I played any contemporary music? And I said Debussy, that was as

far as—! [laughs]

FL: [laughs] So in high school you mentioned you played with some singers,

accompanied some singers?

JB: Yes, it was probably already when I was in college. I remember playing Schubert

lieder a little bit, but it wasn’t much of anything.

FL: So, no real ensemble experience, prior to college?

JB: Nothing, nothing. And I didn’t know any other people who did music until I got to

college!

FL: Wow.

JB: I was totally alone in all of that.

FL: Were there any—there must have been some important musical experiences you had

prior to college that really kind of caught your attention?

JB: I don’t think so. I mean, just the Graudans, and that whole circle. Then I really—I

began practicing a lot, and sort of thoughtfully. And before that, I don’t know what I

was doing.

FL: Mm-hm. Did you hear much music on the radio, classical music on the radio?

JB: My father listened to the Metropolitan Opera on Saturday afternoons, and we had,

initially, an old wind-up Victrola!

FL: Yeah, yeah.

JB: And he listened to Chaliapin [Feodor Chaliapin, 1873-1938, bass singer]!

FL: Uh-huh. [laughs]

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JB: But I don’t remember hearing—it was vocal music that he liked. Other than that,

nothing.

FL: When you were in high school, did you have any kind of future plans for music? Or

were you just doing it because you just wanted to do it?

JB: Well, it was sort of ordained that that’s what I was going to do. And I got out of

school early; I was at home in the early afternoon. I didn’t really know anybody. I

would go home, and supposedly I was supposed to practice. But, well, I guess I did

because I learned all this stuff. But it was—I don’t remember, I just didn’t have any

kind of a musical education except for my piano lesson, period.

FL: So you didn’t do any study of music theory prior to college?

JB: Certainly not! [laughs]

FL: Wow!

JB: Except there were these little sessions with [Ernst] Křenek. But I don’t think I really

knew what that was all about, and I obviously didn’t because when I went to the

University of Minnesota as a music major and took the first theory class, I hated it!

[laughs] It didn’t have anything to do with anything, as far as I was concerned. I had

no problem with it, the ear training stuff. I also, as I remember, my mother was

always trying to get a diagnosis or something—what later she called a prognosis.

[laughs] I remember being taken, when I was quite young, to the guy who was the

head of the University of Minnesota music department, Mr. Scott [Carlyle M. Scott,

pianist & Music Department Chairman (dates of appointment unverified)], to be

evaluated. And I remember he tested my ear, and at that point, well, I must have had

absolute pitch because I remember being a parlor exhibit, too! [laughs]

FL: [laughs]

JB: But I remember him just playing a whole handful of notes that I was supposed to, you

know, keys, and I was supposed to say what they were. But I don’t have absolute

pitch now.

3. Philosophy studies, music theory with Křenek. (28:33—CD1 28:33)

FL: Wow. So you have a degree in philosophy from the University of Minnesota from

1946. When did your interest in philosophy—how did that kind of come about?

JB: Are you sure that 1946 is right? I’m not sure.

FL: Well, that was what was on your resume. Maybe the date is wrong.

JB: Maybe it isn’t, because I remember I didn’t go to Berkeley until ’48, but I think it

may be a little later than that.

FL: Okay.

JB: Well, I started Minnesota in 1941, but I took—then I went to New York after two

years. So the first two years, I was a music major, I guess. Maybe I switched already

in the second year to philosophy because I really didn’t like the—but mostly I was

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doing a lot of practicing at that point, and playing. And going—by this point my

mother was beginning to be worried that I was a social misfit because, since she had

denied me my—since I had been, I hadn’t been part of the kid community at all. So,

of course, I had to go to the university, and I had to join a sorority, and I had to do all

those things.

But it was at that point that I also—then I began studying with Křenek. I think

that was probably when I was—it may have been when I was still in high school, but

certainly when I was in college. And I studied sixteenth-century counterpoint with

him! And then I began going to all the ISCM [International Society for Contemporary

Music] concerts, which he organized and ran. And at that point, and then I met some

of his students. He was teaching at Hamline [University, St. Paul, Minn.], and I met

some of his students, and then I began to have a kind of sense of what this music

world was all about. But that was, I think, already when I started college.

FL: But your interest in philosophy—how did that kind of come about?

JB: Well, I probably took a philosophy course, along with the other courses I was taking,

and there was this guy, Herbert Feigl [1902-1988], who was a sort of friend of my

parents, and lived near where we lived. And I probably took a course with him. And

that was interesting. So I began taking more courses with him, and with more people

in the philosophy department, and I liked it. That was much more interesting than the

music courses, which I thought were useless.

FL: Was that kind of intellectual discourse part of your family?

JB: Well, my family, they were certainly intellectuals, and there was certainly big talk and

discussions going on around the dinner table. And my brother was in medical school;

the conversation at the dinner table was about his cadaver, and my father seeing this

beautiful cancer of the cervix that day. [laughs] And my mother would stop it after a

while!

FL: [laughs]

JB: But she was very active in the Minneapolis community in politics and in the Jewish

community. She claimed that she was the one who got Hubert Humphrey [1911–

1978; U.S. Vice President, 1965–1969] to run for Governor. He was a professor at the

university at the time. Anyhow, she was a big supporter of his and a big campaigner

for him. They were generally leftist, politically. I think my mother was probably

considered a communist, which is ridiculous! [laughs] Because there wasn’t any

Communist Party around that I know of. Although my father had a relative who was a

Trotskyite, who went to Mexico with [Leon] Trotsky [Russian revolutionary, 1879–

1940]. [laughs] And he was not liked by the family! He was bad. But there certainly

was—my mother read a lot; my father read a lot. There was a lot of intellectual

stimulation—that, there was. No music, but lots of—on the other hand, I didn’t like to

read, at all. And I didn’t read except when I had to read for school. So, I don’t know

why, but I just didn’t like to read. I was much more interested in dogs! [laughs]

FL: Did you have like a pet dog or something?

JB: Well, I was always wanting to have a dog, and my mother would always tell me to

play with the dog next door.

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FL: [laughs]

JB: But we finally did get a dog, and that was a terrible catastrophe. We had—actually,

there were several dogs. One died of distemper. And then we had another dog, and at

that point, in fact, I was reading—maybe that’s why I didn’t like to read. I was

reading a book, and I saw the dog go out of the fence, out of the gate. And I thought,

“Well, I’ll go get him in a few minutes.” But it was too late; he got run over, and that

was a big disaster! But when I was in junior high school, coming home, when all the

other kids were still in school, and I’d stop at the neighbor’s yard and talk to the two

dogs there about what had happened to me! [laughs] So yeah, animals were always

important.

FL: So when you were in college, and you got interested in philosophy, that thing with

reading, that must have been—?

JB: Well, by that time I was reading, I think, yeah. But certainly when I was in college I

was reading all the time, and probably also in high school. But I didn’t read as an

avocation, as a pleasure.

FL: So you mentioned that [Ernst] Křenek was a friend of Joanna Graudan, and you had

taken counterpoint lessons with him. What other study did you do with him? Did you

do, like, any score study or analysis?

JB: I think so, because she organized, Joanna organized these—well, certainly in

connection with the performance of all of the Bach preludes and fugues [Well-

Tempered Clavier]. He came and talked to us about them and did some analysis. And

also, there was a lot of interaction with him. No formal analysis course or anything—

the lessons were these, the sixteenth-century counterpoint thing. But in connection

with the ISCM concerts, he—well, you know, I learned not only about sixteenth-

century counterpoint, but he was also lots of talk about twelve-tone.

FL: I was just going to ask, yeah.

JB: Twelve-tone stuff and some analysis of it. And I think I must have spent quite a bit of

time hanging around and talking about music in various ways with him.

FL: He’s an interesting figure because he’s seemed to be very opinionated, but yet there

was a lot of change in his ideas over time.

JB: You know that I wrote my master’s thesis on his four piano sonatas? [“An Analysis of

the Four Piano Sonatas of Ernst Křenek,” Master’s thesis, University of California,

1951.]

FL: No, I didn’t know that!

JB: [laughs] Four—there were then four piano sonatas. That was my thesis. And one of

the big points in the thesis was that he changed—well, first it was Jonny spielt auf

[opera by Křenek], which was jazz. And then came the twelve-tone stuff, which he

was still pretty much into, I think, when I knew him. But on the other hand, he made

fun of it. I remember— [laughs] Well, he sort of made fun of it. And he certainly

distinguished among the ways in which it was used. He talked about [laughs] a

woman who came to study with him, composition, and after a month or something

she said she was so grateful to him, teaching her this twelve-tone thing, because

11

before that it used to take her months and months to write a piece. And now she could

write a piece in a week! [laughs] And it was probably just as bad as the other pieces.

But that was certainly where I—that was where I got introduced to twentieth-century

music.

FL: Tell me a little bit more about what he was telling you about twelve-tone theory. You

read some statements of his, and he was talking about it being the future of music and

very kind of strident about that. But he obviously—

JB: Well, on the other hand, there’s this book—I’ve forgotten what it is—the music

appreciation book that he wrote. It’s something like All About Music [Ed. Note:

Křenek, Ernst: Exploring Music (London: Calder & Boyars, 1966); original German

title: Zur Sprache gebracht: Essays über Musik (Deutsche Buch-Gemeinschaft,

1958).] That’s not right, but it’s a very good book! I don’t think I have it anymore; I

don’t know what happened to it. But he was a wonderful teacher and not at all like

[Arnold] Schoenberg. He wasn’t only teaching twelve-tone stuff, he was—for

instance, he was an incredible musician. He could sit down and play on the piano a

Beethoven symphony, or some atonal piece. He was a very good pianist. And he,

among many others, completed one of the Schubert piano sonatas that’s unfinished.

He just had an incredible ear; he could play anything! And he’d play it and sing what

he couldn’t play. And, well he was certainly a kind of person that I had never ever met

or knew existed. He was a really profound, very thorough and diversified, musician.

Unlike Hansi Graudan, who was a piano player. [laughs]

FL: Right.

JB: So the fact that she made that connection, I think, was probably very important. And

it was studying with Feigl, and also this guy Sellers [Wilfrid Sellers, 1912-1989,

philosopher], who was the other—well, as a matter of fact, the University of

Minnesota was pretty amazing, at that point. Alfred Kazin [1915-1998, writer] came

to teach in the English department, and I took courses with him and got to know him.

And Saul Bellow [1915-2005, writer] was there for quite a while, and I got to know

him quite well, and his whole family. And then there was Feigl, and Sellers, oh, and

also, what’s his name? The red-headed poet from the South. I can’t think of it at the

moment, but there were a lot of extraordinary people around that university at that

point. Plus, oh yeah, there was Louis Krasner [1903-1995, violinist], who was the

concertmaster [of the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra].

FL: Oh, yeah, my!

JB: And I spent a lot of time with his family. In fact, after the Graudan’s left, the Krasners

sort of took over as my musical family. And he, Louis, organized a whole series of

concerts at Macalester [College]—not just contemporary music. In fact, they played

The Musical Offering [by J. S. Bach], I remember. And again, I got a whole education

through those concerts that he organized. So, you know, at some point, in the upper

years of high school, everything changed, really because of Hansi Graudan. And

Mitropoulos and Krasner and Křenek and this, it was a sort of—we called it the

Athens of the West! [laughs]

FL: So in your studies with Křenek, are there things that have kind of stayed with you,

musical values and stuff like that?

12

JB: Well, that you can take a piece of music and think about it. That you can go deeply

into a piece of music. There was not much connection—there was studying music and

doing counterpoint and so forth, but it didn’t connect much with performance, as is

the case generally, I think.

FL: Yeah, right.

JB: Although he was a wonderful performer, as far as I remember we never talked about

performance with him. And I never talked about the pieces I was playing with him.

And Hansi Graudan, her way of teaching was: play this louder, and wiggle that finger

more, and nothing about the music. [laughs] Except to be faithful to it, whatever that

meant.

FL: Did Křenek talk much about some of the other composers that he knew? I mean, that

was a real kind of hotbed of activity.

JB: Well, he certainly, you know, there was Alban Berg [1885–1935].

FL: All the Darmstadt [Germany] people. [Ed. note: The uncompromising serialist

composers, associated with the Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New

Music (1946–early 1960s)]

JB: Well, not so much that, more the Viennese thing.

FL: Yeah, uh-huh.

JB: I don’t remember him—I don’t remember him talking about the sort of politics of

contemporary music at that point.

FL: Did he talk about the musical revolution that was happening? Or did he see it that

way?

JB: I don’t know. Since I was such a hick [laughs] from the farm—I don’t mean that

literally, but I just had no sense of any of that, that was going on. So I know that he

was, he felt—I mean, here he was at this little podunk university college, university in

Hamline. I mean, there were all these people around who were European—who were

refugees, and not very happy that they were stuck in Minneapolis and Saint Paul. So

there was, I think, quite a bit of—well, one thing that was very fortunate was that

because they were stuck in Minneapolis and Saint Paul, they were very accessible to

somebody like me, much more so than in New York, for example. So there was this

very tight community of refugees, music people and refugees. And Feigl wasn’t part

of that, but still, he was sort of part of that. There was this whole group of people who

were out of place, and found each other, and were very happy to adopt a kid who was

interested in music. So, and that was the good part about being in Minneapolis.

[45:20–CD1 45:20— End of CD1]

4. Piano studies with Artur Schnabel, other philosophy studies.

(45:20–CD2 00:00)

FL: I want to ask you about your studies with Artur Schnabel [1882-1951, pianist and

composer]. And Schnabel knew Křenek, is that correct? Is that the connection?

13

JB: I think so. He certainly knew [Roger] Sessions [1896-1985, American composer]. No,

the connection was Joanna Graudan. She sent me to Schnabel, as sending me to her

teacher. And that’s how I got to him. I don’t remember playing for him before I went.

I remember she had me play for [Rudolf] Serkin [1903-1991, pianist and Director of

Curtis Institute of Music Philadelphia, 1968-1976]. And in fact, when I was twelve, I

went to audition at Curtis, but I didn’t get in. And I don’t remember playing for

Schnabel, but she insisted that I did. So I guess I did because he came periodically to

play with the orchestra, and I guess I played for him. I definitely remember playing

for Serkin. But anyhow, he accepted me, and I always had the feeling he accepted me

simply because she said so, but maybe I actually played for him.

FL: So where did you start studying with him? Eventually, he was in New York—but did

you study—?

JB: In New York. He was already a refugee, living at the Peter Stuyvesant Hotel on

Eighty-Sixth and Central Park West. And I was, I guess, eighteen when I went to New

York.

FL: And that was, what, 1943?

JB: Yes.

FL: Okay. And then you went to Columbia University, right?

JB: Yeah, because my parents at this point said I had to go to the university. But

Columbia had a special program for professional children. It was called the

University Undergraduates. And that was how women—because Columbia was still

all boys. [laughs] Or men, I suppose you’re supposed to say. It was just a fluke. I

went to register, and the person that interviewed me—I was going to take, you know,

extension courses or something. The person who interviewed me said, “Well, you

should be in University Undergraduates,” which allowed me to take any course in any

part of the university that I wanted to, and not just—I mean, that program was

supposed to be for children who were like working during the day or something. But

it didn’t—I could take any courses I wanted to.

And that was when the philosophy thing got really going. I took a course from

Irwin Edman [1896-1954] on aesthetics, [Ernst] Cassirer [1874-1945], all kinds of—

my advisor was Ernest Nagel [1901-1985]. So, and that was, I lived right practically

around the corner from Columbia. And that was very important because it was my—I

mean, I wasn’t at Juilliard [School of Music] or someplace else where there were

other students. Again, I was off, isolated somewhere. But, and when I was going to

Columbia, I still didn’t really meet anybody much. It was during the war, and so the

population was kind of funny. I seem to remember people who were older in those

classes, but they were very good classes.

And that was—the first two years I was going, ’43, ’44, ’45, I was studying,

taking—well, there were three of us: Leon Fleisher [b. 1928, pianist], Claude Frank

[b. 1925, pianist], and myself, and then for a while, a woman named Hilda Banks

[Shapiro; b. 1927, pianist], and for a while, Dika Newlin [1923-2006, pianist,

composer]. And everybody went to everybody else’s lessons, which was a big,

important thing because we not only heard what he had to say about the piece we

14

were studying, but everybody else’s pieces as well. And you only played a piece for

him once. You came with your piece. He had his upright piano over there and the

grand piano over here, and you played the piece, and then he went at it. Very often

spending a lot of time on the very beginning of the piece, sort of like Beethoven’s

sketches, which have the implications for everything that happens in the rest of the

piece.

But the very first lesson, he asked me a question like, “Why did you do it that

way?” or something, and not aggressively, but really asking. Nobody had ever asked

me a question like that before! Nobody had ever asked me why I did something, or

suggested that there was more than one way of doing it, or that you could think about

that, that this was a decision process. And I had no idea how to even engage such a

question! So, and that had a huge effect, because I had no idea how to think about

those things. So I sort of got paralyzed. I mean, I really, I couldn’t play for quite a

while. I mean, I could play, but it was all kind of self-conscious and stiff.

And of course in those days I was practicing a huge amount. I was practicing,

like, three hours in the morning and three hours in the afternoon, but all now trying to

understand, trying to think about why am I doing it this way or that way? And he also

sent all of his students to study with Erich Itor Kahn [1905-1956, composer], who

was a sort of second-rate—well, not very nice—but he was certainly not a well-

known composer. But we had to study theory with him.

And one of the things was that I was a terrible sight-reader. I mean, really,

really awful! Because I’d get whoever was the teacher to play it for me, and then I

could use the score because I knew what it was supposed to sound like. And so at the

first lesson he wanted to talk about a Bach chorale, and he asked me to play it, and I

couldn’t play it. I mean, I couldn’t read it, and he thought I was fooling him or

something. But I really couldn’t sight-read, and I think that’s one thing that has made

me become so interested in the whole business of notation, and what it captures and

what it doesn’t capture, and why people have trouble learning it and learning to read

standard notation. And what it has to do with playing, and learning from the score and

then getting beyond the score, getting off the score. So, that was at the very beginning

of the lessons. But I studied a lot of stuff with him.

FL: Well, Schnabel seems somewhat unusual, as far as insisting that students really

understand the score. And there he was making a connection between music theory

and performance.

JB: Absolutely, he was. And he was always talking about the music. He never talked

about technique for one minute. His general approach was, if you know how you

want it to sound, you’ll find a way to make it that way. And you know, if you

complained about the piano, that was no excuse. He used to say, “You should be able

to play it on a noodle board!” [laughs]

FL: [laughs]

JB: And then on the other hand, he would—I mean, he didn’t just—he played a lot. But

he wouldn’t just play; there was always a reason. And he talked particularly—and this

goes back to the Dalcroze thing again—he talked particularly about phrasing, and he

was very much interested in—I mean, if you look at the Beethoven editions of the

15

sonatas, you find these roman numerals sitting there, which have nothing to do with

harmony. They have to do with the phrase structure, how many bars. So he was very

interested in asymmetrical—in moments when the phrasing was asymmetrical, and he

was very interested—the whole thing was to project the structure. That was what he

talked about.

FL: Right. And what’s interesting about his use of music theory—it’s not to explain the

piece of music, but to give you creative tools as a performer.

JB: Absolutely.

FL: Because he seemed almost hostile to an academic analysis of the music because he

said that doesn’t explain the music.

JB: It doesn’t—it’s arid. [laughs] And he was interested in making the music come alive

and projecting that. I remember studying the Mozart B-flat Sonata [K.333], [sings].

And he must have spent half an hour on [sings phrase]—just that much. First of all, it

shouldn’t be [sings same phrase, different emphasis], but it should be [sings phrase].

And he generally, if you listen, you’ll hear he goes to the ends of phrases, even if it’s

a weak beat ending. But then he would put words to these things! [laughs]

FL: [laughs]

JB: So, [sings] “Listen to the birdies sing.” [laughs] And by putting words to them, you

would get the articulation that he had in mind. And that may come—you know that

his career started as an accompanist to his wife [Therese Behr, 1876-1959, contralto],

before she was his wife.

FL: I didn’t know that was how it started.

JB: Therese. That was really his first career, was as her accompanist. And she was—she

continued forever to be the final opinion. [laughs] I mean, she was a wonderful

musician, and he took what she said as the gospel. So that sometimes—the lessons

were in his apartment there in the Peter Stuyvesant Hotel, and she was around, of

course. So the way it worked: lessons lasted about three hours. And you can imagine

they would if he spent half an hour on that. The point was on that thing that the left

hand, the grouping, the phrasing, goes against, overlaps, the phrasing in the right

hand. And that was what he was working on, that you should be able to hear both of

them, both of these groupings. And I was having a really hard time doing that, at

which point he, at some point he said, “Miss Shapiro, perhaps you should take up the

clarinet.” [laughs] Since I could only play one line like that!

FL: [laughs]

JB: But—so the lesson was three hours, and after three hours there would be tea. And we

would all have tea, and he would hold forth on whatever he was reading, including

admitting that he would read the beginning and the end of a book, and then he would

fill in the details! [laughs]

FL: [laughs]

JB: And he thought it was very funny that I was studying philosophy, and he would make

jokes about it. He’d tease me about it. And in those, when we had tea, Therese, his

16

wife, I remember one time she said that she—well, we didn’t hear it, but when we

came back and it was time for the next lesson, he made Hilda, who had taken the

previous lesson, come back because Therese said the tempo was too fast. And so they

had to take care of that.

FL: Wow!

JB: So, but certainly the focus was on—he would pick some aspect of the music itself and

work at trying to get you to project it. Sometimes a detail like that, sometimes big

structure.

FL: Was it one lesson a week, or did you have more?

JB: Every other week.

FL: Every other week.

JB: But every week, I was there with the other people.

FL: Yeah, mm-hm. There’s so many aspects of Schnabel that it’s hard to choose. But

some ideas that are really interesting: he talks about the futility of recreating the

composer’s intention. And that’s still the big thing out there even today.

JB: Right. Well, that’s why I was making jokes about Hansi Graudan, who was, you were

supposed to be, yeah, right. And all that was so new to me! And I was so scared,

anyhow. Every time I’d go for a lesson, I was sure I was insulting him by my playing.

And I was so totally uneducated as far as music was concerned.

No, it was not to recreate the composer’s intentions, but to recreate the music.

And that was your job, was to try to find, to understand the piece and not to start out

by thinking, “What did Beethoven want me to do?”

FL: Right. And he talked about the performer becoming equal with the composer.

JB: Right. And he also, another big thing was—that I quote often—“Practicing should be

experiment, not drill.” And he would experiment. I’d stand outside the apartment door

and listen to him practice, and he was always practicing phrasing, and experimenting,

both with the, you know, where the phrase boundaries were, but also how to project

it. And that, I think, I associate that, again, with the Dalcroze stuff, which is also all

about movement and phrasing. And so I think that’s why, when I watch what people

who have no music background, no music training—kids—when I see that what

they’re representing in their invented notations, that’s what they’re representing, this

figural grouping. And I don’t think I would have noticed it. I don’t think I would have

been so sensitive to it. I wouldn’t have understood it, if it hadn’t been for this

collected background of emphasis on that kind of a live structure. And also, the whole

issue of anything—from a motif to a note—changing its function depending on the

context. That was something else that I think he was—you know, you can’t play this

the same as you did before because it’s somewhere else. And that was a big point.

FL: So it’s interesting in a way. Maybe it’s kind of paradoxical, but I’m sure he didn’t see

it that way: he was insisting on accurate editions of the score, which seems very

scholarly, and it’s scholars who do those. But yet, there’s this tension with musical

scholarship.

17

JB: Yeah, well, but you have to have the score in order to find out what the material is

that you’re working with.

FL: Right. You know, for him it wasn’t then an authentic recreation of the composer’s

intention, but you had to start with something that didn’t have somebody else’s

interpretive ideas in it.

JB: For sure, and that was very important. You shouldn’t use somebody else’s edited

edition. And it’s, you know, in his edition of the Beethoven sonatas it’s very clear

what’s him and what’s Beethoven. And well, that may be sort of what led me to the

business of the Beethoven fingerings.

FL: Yeah, your article on that, yeah. [Bamberger, Jeanne: “The Musical Significance of

Beethoven’s Fingerings in the Piano Sonatas” (Music Forum v. IV [1976]: 237–80)]

JB: Yeah, right, because the fingerings that Beethoven wrote in are groupings! [laughs]

They’re not technical. In fact, they’re often terribly awkward, technically. But they

tell you what the score, an ordinary score, can’t tell you.

FL: Mm-hm.

JB: So for example, I think at the end of opus 111, there’s a C major scale, which he

fingers 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3 because that’s the grouping. And there are many

more. I mean, I found, I really—that was the first paper I ever wrote, but I was

interested in it because it, again, was a performance issue. The fingerings were—well,

it was a wedding of the performance issues with structure. So he was putting in

fingerings in order to, as a means of helping you to project the structure, and very

often the grouping structure. In the beginning of the opus 81A Sonata, at the very

beginning, there’s a crescendo and he fingers it 5-5-5. Well, but it’s legato! [laughs]

FL: Oh!

JB: Well, and it works. Because if you try to, you know, hang on and play it legato, you

can’t hear your crescendo. And you really get this feeling of movement towards the

goal by going, by—so, you don’t have to use his fingering, but you have to try it,

because it’s telling you something. And you get a feel for what’s going on in the

music by trying his fingering. So, and all of that’s related to this whole notion of

grouping, and figures, in contrast to meter.

FL: Wow! There’s a quote here. He says, “I do not believe that great composers are ever

inspired by the specific qualities of instruments.” Yet, in the same paragraph, he says,

“The conception of musical ideas in the composer’s mind is followed by a gradual

indication as to which of the available instruments might be suited to convey those

ideas.” And then he says, “The greatest part of Beethoven’s piano music can be

communicated only by means of the piano.” [Ed. note: quotes taken from Schnabel's

Music and the Line of Most Resistance (Princeton: Princeton University Press,

1942).]

JB: Yeah, well but I think if you take the chronology there, he’s saying that the composer

isn’t initially inspired—

FL: Right, that’s right.

18

JB: —by the instruments, but once he’s got something that he wants to project, then he’s

going to look for the instruments that are right. And in the case of the Beethoven

piano sonatas, that’s the piano. [laughs]

FL: Right, right. When I was reading that, it got me thinking about some of his comments

about historical instruments, and stuff like that. And he was, had some problems with

that.

JB: [laughs] Right.

FL: Because people talk about Beethoven hearing his piano in his head when he was

writing it.

JB: Yeah.

FL: Did he talk to you much about historical performance issues?

JB: He pooh-poohed it.

FL: Yeah, yeah.

JB: And he certainly didn’t—I don’t know whether he said this, or where, but the general

feeling was, if Bach had had a piano, he would have loved it. [laughs] And if

Beethoven had had a big Steinway, he would have been very happy.

FL: What did he think of the harpsichord as an instrument?

JB: I never heard him say anything about it, but I’m sure he thought it was kind of

piddling.

FL: Uh-huh.

JB: Maybe I’m just projecting.

FL: Yeah. With this idea of the composer, at some point, getting a clear conception of the

instruments for the music, what did he think of arrangements of pre-existent works?

JB: Well, by the way, maybe you can answer this question. Somebody used a piece—was

working with kids, and it was a piece, a Mozart piece, for violin, piano, and cello, and

flute. I don’t think there is any such piece.

FL: No, I don’t—

JB: There’s an example. And we were thinking, maybe the flute was playing—maybe it

was a string quartet, for all I know. I don’t know what it was, but anyhow. I never

heard him talk about arrangements, but I don’t think he would be particularly

interested. I don’t know.

FL: Another interesting idea of his, among so many: this idea of the autonomy of art, and

in music that the particular piece is a unique entity that must be looked at solely on its

own terms. And that’s certainly not a current idea out there today.

JB: Well, it was. It was, during the critical, in literature. [Ed. note: Reference to the “New

Criticism” theory in literature, mid-20th

century.]

FL: Right.

JB: And I think—well, I don’t know that he was part of that, but it was certainly the same

19

point of view. It has nothing to do with what Beethoven had for breakfast, or you

know, what he was reading. This is the piece, and everything you need to know is

there.

FL: Yeah. What’s your feelings about that, as a musician?

JB: Well certainly I tend to lean in that direction, I would say. You know, at the University

of Chicago I taught a course in art, music, and literature, and we all—it was a big

course—and we all taught all three. But we never crossed over. We’d have three

weeks in one area, and three weeks in another area. And if kids made connections,

fine. But I’ve never, except with Křenek, in my thesis. It was clear that his life, and

the changes in his life, changed the style in which he was writing. And I tried to make

that connection in the thesis. But in general, I don’t think it’s very interesting.

FL: Schnabel talks about the danger of stylistic generalizations, even—even within a

composer’s output.

JB: Right. It’s funny, because a lot of the this stuff I feel is part of me, and maybe that’s

where I got it, originally. But it’s also Schoenberg: Style and Idea [1975], you know.

The idea is what’s important, not the style. [laughs]

FL: Mm-hm. Schnabel was obviously known as a distinguished performer of Mozart,

Schubert, and Beethoven. Did he publicly perform any contemporary music?

JB: I don’t think he even performed his own music. You know, he composed a lot.

FL: Yeah, I was going to ask you about that.

JB: No, not when I knew him. He may have when he was younger; I don’t know. But he

was very—he felt closest, much closer to somebody like Roger Sessions than I think

he did to other pianists. He really—he said, “I don’t teach the piano. Does the

carpenter teach the hammer?” [laughs]

FL: [laughs]

JB: And, you know, it was music that was—he really wasn’t teaching the piano. And he

was interested in—his interests were in other people who were interested and close to

music, not to piano playing.

FL: Did you study any contemporary repertoire with him?

JB: No.

FL: Would he have been—it wouldn’t have been a problem, though, if you had brought it

to him?

JB: I don’t know. Nobody else did, either. I don’t think there was anything beyond

Brahms. Certainly no French music. I don’t know if he talks about French music, but

I have a big bias against French music! [laughs] I don’t know where I got it. But,

well, it was also with Sessions. I mean, there was this [Igor] Stravinsky-Schoenberg

thing.

FL: Yes, right!

JB: And Stravinsky was on the French side. I still don’t like French music.

20

FL: Did you ever play any of Schnabel’s piano music?

JB: No. No, surprisingly, [Dimitri] Mitropoulos played a symphony of Schnabel’s with

the Minneapolis Symphony. And he came, and of course the audience hated it. Have

you ever heard any of his music?

FL: Yes, you loaned me a CD.

JB: Oh, yeah.

FL: There’s also a CD we have with some choral music.

JB: Choral music? I didn’t know that.

FL: Yeah, yeah. It’s so interesting that here’s this very august, classical pianist, yet his

music doesn’t seem to overtly reflect that. It’s non-tonal, and—

JB: Well, but only in sort of, it’s highly structured.

FL: Yeah.

JB: What was I going to say? Something about his—I don’t remember, about his

composition. But he was really quite—that was where he saw his real—oh, I know. I

was going to say, have you ever heard any of his cadenzas for the Mozart concerto

[no. 24 c minor, K.491]?

FL: No! No.

JB: [laughs] Well, they’re pretty far out! There must be some—I’m sure there’s some

recorded.

FL: I’ll have to look. That would be very curious! It’s not on the order of when [Alfred]

Schnittke [1934-1998, composer] did cadenzas for stuff?

JB: No, because those are funny. But these are very serious, and they’re sort of on the

verge of being atonal, but not quite. [laughs]

FL: Wow! [laughs] Wow!

JB: Very chromatic.

FL: Did Schnabel talk to you much about his music? And just, that different world that he

inhabited as a composer, as opposed to—?

JB: No. All I know is that he really enjoyed being with Roger Sessions. He sent me to

Roger Sessions; Schnabel sent me to Sessions. But I don’t know, I don’t ever

remember him talking about his own composing, except that he had the usual

twentieth-century paranoid attitude, because nobody plays his music, nobody likes

this kind of music, and that kind of stuff. I don’t think—paranoid is probably not the

right word to say, but resentment.

FL: Yeah. But that was hard on other people, Schoenberg, and—

JB: Oh, yeah, all of them, right.

FL: Yeah, yeah.

JB: Well I think Schoenberg was really paranoid. [laughs]

21

FL: Oh! [laughs] Read his letters!

JB: He was! Yeah, right. Yeah, right.

FL: I was quite shocked when I read some of them. Letters to the Editor, he’d write back,

and whoa!

JB: [laughs] Right. Well, when we get there, I’ll tell you about my visit to Schoenberg.

5. Concerto movement by Johan Rösler, formerly attributed to

Beethoven. (01:16:45—CD2 00:31:30)

FL: I do have a question there. Moving on, so we don’t—okay. In 1946 you played a

concerto movement in D major; at the time it was believed to be by Beethoven. It was

a performance with a City of Saint Paul Pops Concert.

JB: Right.

FL: And that’s the Minneapolis Pops Orchestra?

JB: Right.

FL: Yeah. So tell me about finding this piece and performing it, and what brought that

about?

JB: Well, I found it in the Newark Public Library. Why I went there, went looking for it? I

think I was probably looking for unedited, you know, looking for editions of stuff I

was playing.

FL: The Beethoven Collected Works?

JB: Exactly.

FL: Yeah, that was the 1888 edition, with Guido Adler [1855-1941, musicologist].

JB: That’s right. I think that’s—and I just stumbled on it and took it home and played it.

And thought, “I’ve made a discovery.”

FL: Yeah, there was no indication in that edition that there was any question of

authenticity?

JB: Not that I know of.

FL: Yeah.

JB: Except that in my—that’s not true, because in my—I don’t know whether Xerox, or

what—but I made a copy of it that I used to learn it. And there’s an asterisk and a

footnote. And I, at this very moment, I can’t remember what the footnote said, but I

think there was somebody else’s—? Maybe it simply said that Guido Adler found it,

or something. But it’s now attributed to somebody else, isn’t it?

FL: Yeah, this guy Johann Joseph Rösler.

JB Yeah, right!

FL: 1771 to 1813.

22

JB: That’s what I think the asterisk—has his name connected to it because I remember

this name. [laughs]

FL: According to the research that I’ve done, when Adler put it in there he didn’t know

that there was any question of authenticity.

JB: Aha, well then probably somebody else might have just written that in, into the score.

FL: Yeah. It wasn’t until 1925 that it was correctly identified.

JB: Right, well, and it was certainly after that that I—yeah.

FL: But it still didn’t seem to be publicly known because there had been numerous

recordings of it claiming to be by Beethoven, including some current CDs available

now!

JB: Really! [laughs] Well, I remember telling Schnabel about it, and he said, “Well, what

does it sound like?” And I said, “Well, it sort of sounds like Mozart.” And he was

furious! “One doesn’t sound like Mozart!” Mozart is—that was again, style, but not

Mozart, not the piece of music. And that was the end of the discussion.

FL: Wow. So how did it come about that you got a chance to play this with the orchestra?

JB: Well, it’s interesting that I couldn’t have answered that question except that going

through all of these mounds of letters that have surfaced I found letters, I guess, to my

mother. Anyhow, letters saying something about talking to the guy who was the

conductor of that orchestra and arranging it. And I think [Louis] Krasner was

somehow involved. But it was manipulated, [laughs] in the sense that people got to

the conductor, and the conductor agreed to perform it.

FL: Mm-hm, and you wrote the cadenza for that, right?

JB: I did. I also played it with the University of California—

FL: Berkeley.

JB: Berkeley, yeah.

FL: Right, in 1950.

JB: Yeah. And Sessions said afterwards, “The best part was the cadenza!” [laughs] And

he also said, by the way, when I was doing that—going out to lunch with him, and he

said, “Well Jeanne, I hope you’re not thinking of being a composer because women

who compose are very unhappy.” [laughs]

FL: [laughs]

JB: And then he started mentioning several of them, who had been students of his, and all

of whom were very unhappy. [laughs]

FL: [laughs] Wow! Did your performance of that piece draw attention to it by other

pianists, do you know?

JB: I don’t think so. I think it was, you know, sort of a one-shot thing and that was it.

After all, you know, it was a college orchestra.

FL: Yeah, but as far as with, in Minneapolis?

23

JB: Oh, not that I’m aware of. Pops Orchestra, I guess, is it—you know, it was in a huge

hall, but people were eating. You know, it was that kind of pops! [laughs]

FL: Yeah, right, right.

JB: Schnabel used to say he didn’t like to record. You’d never know he didn’t like to

record, since he recorded all that stuff. But he said he didn’t like to record because he

always imagined people listening to the record and eating. [laughs]

6. Study with Roger Sessions. (1:22:37–CD2 00:37:17)

FL: Yeah. [laughs] Moving on to Roger Sessions, whom you studied with, according to

your resume, in 1948 through 1951. Is that correct?

JB: Correct.

FL: And your connection with Sessions was through Schnabel, right?

JB: He literally sent me to him. But when I got my degree in philosophy, I mean, there I

had a B.A., and there was a big—I didn’t know what to do. Because suddenly I

realized you can’t get a job with a B.A. What are you going to do?

FL: Yeah.

JB: And I went, I had to make a decision between: I was going to go to the University of

Chicago, in the Committee on Social Thought, because Schnabel had come and given

a series of lectures there, and he was a friend of the guy who ran it. So I was torn

between going in that direction some more, and going and studying music for the first

time, really. I mean, studying. And by that time I was really interested in trying to

understand more about how a piece of music works, and so that’s why I went to study

with Sessions instead of going to the University of Chicago and doing more

philosophy kind of stuff.

FL: Right, so this was at the University of California at Berkeley, when he was there?

JB: Right, right.

FL: What kind of courses did you take with him? Did it also include any private study?

JB: Well, yes, definitely! First of all, I didn’t have a degree in music, so I had to take the

undergraduate music courses. So I took courses from David Boyden [1910-1986,

Professor of Music, musicologist],and [Manfred] Bukofzer [910-1955, musicologist].

FL: Oh, my!

JB: [laughs] He and I did not get along very well!

FL: [laughs]

JB: And as well as Sessions. And then I kept taking Special Topics. In fact, I really got

my degree in Special Topics, which were sessions with Sessions. And a lot of—in the

beginning, Roger was writing his harmony book [Sessions, Roger: Harmonic

Practice (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1951)], and I was the guinea pig. In fact, if you

look at the introduction, if you look at the acknowledgments, you’ll see. I was simply

24

going through all the exercises with him. And [Robert] Bob Helps [1928–2001,

pianist, composer]?

FL: Mm-hm, the pianist.

JB: He and I were the guinea pigs for that book. And that was a fantastic education

because I was not only doing the exercises, but he was talking with me about them.

And at that point, theory got to be interesting because, you know, it wasn’t following

rules, and not being sure not to have any parallel fifths or something, but it was all

about function, and structural functions, and harmonic functions. Something that had

to do with music!

And then I took his analysis class, [laughs] and he spent the first—he spent

more than half of the semester on the first movement of the Eroica Symphony

[Beethoven’s Symphony no. 3 in E-flat Major, op. 55]. And that was a revelation! I

had no idea that there were things like that in music. And at the end of—the exam, at

the end, he gave us a piece of the music to analyze, and I said I couldn’t do it, and I

was going to walk out of the exam. And he said, “Well, just do it. I won’t read it. Just

do it for yourself.” So I did it for myself, and of course he took it, and read it and it

was fine.

But, hanging around with all of these big, important people, it was very easy

to feel pretty little. [laughs] So, and then I was taking a composition course from

somebody named Charles Cushing [1905-1982, composer], and going to all of

Sessions’ composition seminars, where the composition students would bring their

pieces, and he would laboriously play them on the piano and talk about them. And

that was another whole education! And just being around, really, for the first time,

with other music students was a whole new experience. There was, I mean, Leon

Kirchner [1919-2009, composer] was teaching there as an instructor. Earl Kim [1920-

1998, composer] was away that first year; he had the Paris Prize [Prix de Paris], and

he was in Paris. Andy Imbrie [Andrew Imbrie, 1921-2007, composer] was there. And

I began playing all their music. I gave, you know, the first performance—that’s there,

on one of these CDs—Imbrie’s Piano Sonata, and Leon’s—I don’t think there is a

recording of Leon’s—?

FL: Yeah, what we’ve got here is—

JB: Imbrie and Sessions. I played Sessions’ Second Sonata [for solo piano]. [Ed. note:

Referring to recordings of her performances (also works by Beethoven and Schubert),

given to MIT Music Library; she had not given a recording of Leon Kirshner's

music.]

FL: Yeah.

JB: But I played—wasn’t there a tape or something of his Violin-Piano Duo, Leon’s?

FL: I don’t know.

JB: I guess not. But I played everybody’s music, and that was another whole new life!

And then the second year, I was Sessions’s T.A. [Teaching Assistant] in the analysis

class, and that was also a wonderful experience because I really—he spent quite a bit

of time reminiscing: “When I was in Florence—” and telling bad stories about love

25

affairs, and whatever. But, so the students would come to me for help.

FL: Oh, yes!

JB: [laughs] And one of the things we had to do and they had to do: we’d take a huge

piece of wrapping paper or something, a roll of wrapping paper, and analyze a piece

from beginning to end on these long rolls of paper, doing and saying absolutely

everything that you could about the piece. So I was, I had to help them because he

didn’t interact with the students much individually. And a lot of them didn’t even

understand what he was talking about a lot of the time. We spent a lot of time on the

first two chords in the Eroica Symphony. Why didn’t he just start the piece? What are

those two chords doing there? Well, there was a lot of speculation about that. And

also, I don’t remember—yeah, I guess it was in the analysis; it must have been a

different analysis course. We studied the Schoenberg Fourth Quartet [op. 47], and the

Stravinsky—no, one of the Bartok quartets. And that was a whole different way of—I

mean, the study of the Fourth Quartet wasn’t—I don’t remember him talking about

twelve-tone anything at all. He talked about it just like he talked about the Beethoven

Eroica Symphony.

FL: Well, he seemed to have a faith in, if music was, if it was a good piece of music, and

it was what he called, had intelligibility, it didn’t matter if somebody didn’t

understand it right away. He just seemed to have a faith in that, and didn’t seem to be

caught up in this—?

JB: Accessibility.

FL: Yeah.

JB: Right. Well, in fact, in the paper I just wrote [“An Analysis of the Four Piano Sonatas

of Ernst Křenek” Master’s thesis, U. of Calif., 1951], I quoted him where he said he

was much more interested in the piece that he didn’t understand at first, and had to

come to understand, a piece that he had to listen to many times. He also didn’t like

recordings. And the reason he didn’t like recordings was because they were always

the same. [laughs] And he would get bored with the particular inflections that this

performer was providing. I also remember Mitropoulos coming—Mitropoulos was

going to play a piece of his, and Mitropoulos came, and Sessions handed him the

score and then was busy with something else. And the story was he came back after

half an hour or an hour or something, and Mitropoulos said now he knew the first

movement by heart.

FL: [laughs]

JB: He always played—he always conducted without a score, and I think he was one of

the first people who did. Other people now, I guess, do. But he conducted whatever it

was without a score.

FL: Kind of gave him the freedom to not be tied to it.

JB: Right. But on the other hand, he could sit and memorize it!

FL: Yeah. It’s interesting, Sessions and Schnabel both had a similar idea about

faithfulness to the score, but not over-interpreting.

26

JB: Yeah. Well, Schnabel used to say, sometimes, if you played in a way that inspired

that, he’d say, “You don’t have to heat the music. It’s hot enough already.” [laughs]

FL: [laughs] There’s a quote here from Sessions’s book Questions on Music [Sessions,

Roger: Questions About Music (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970)] that I’ll

read for some comments here. He says, “What one is sometimes tempted to regard as

quasi-pathological is that musical analysis, as sometimes practiced today, like many

other things in our present day world, often tended to become over-specialized,

something to be pursued for its own sake, often with the implied object of discovering

and establishing the ultra ultimate criteria of music on a quasi-scientific, supposedly

rational basis.

JB: [laughs]

FL: [continues reading] Concessions, however, are made somewhat grudgingly to what is

called intuition, as a quasi-explanation of what cannot be fully explained in strictly

analytical terms.” And then he speaks of the antithesis between the creative and the

analytical attitude towards composition. This is coming from a very powerful

intellect, you know.

JB: Well, that’s what it takes, in order to—I mean, a less powerful intellect is willing to

do all the things that he’s talking about there.

FL: Yeah.

JB: But he was never—he was always, well, experimenting. He was always playing

around, considering different kinds of possibilities. Like those first two chords. Well,

you know, what’s the problem? You’ve got E-flat major chords! He’s establishing the

key! Well, that’s not good enough. I mean, he establishes the key when he goes

[sings]. That establishes the key, too. But to puzzle over why something is the way it

is. The recapitulation in that first movement, where the horn is playing sort of like he

was still before.

FL: Right.

JB: Well, you know, you can—what’s that doing? But, there’s so many puzzlements in

any—I mean, that’s the nature of complexity, is that. And it is like Schnabel, in that

it’s not a question of—and I’m sure that all of that had a huge effect on my not, sort

of, joining the club of the music theorists, because they’re just what he says there.

And it doesn’t get to what everybody—on the one hand, what everybody knows how

to do in this culture, that is to say, to make sense of the music that’s all around them.

It doesn’t touch on how they’re doing that, or what the nature of that knowledge is.

And knowledge and intuition, really. But, on the other hand, it doesn’t touch on what

performers are finding in a piece of music, or the nature of complexity. And I think

that’s a really important and interesting subject, and without their saying it, that’s sort

of what they’re into, is that. In fact, at the end of that paper, whichever paper—I don’t

remember what paper it was—but at the end of the paper, I quoted Sessions and

Schnabel, both of them saying what they’re interested in is the pieces that they have

to listen to many times.

FL: Sessions also has an interesting thing about intuition, and it makes me think of you.

He says, “What is called intuition is simply a result of intensive, pertinent functioning

27

of the aural imagination. This has nothing to do with rationality in an analytical

sense.”

JB: Well, but I think that intuition is learned. I mean, I think that you develop your

intuition. I think you have to start with trying to understand what you understand. And

then, but then you can develop that. So, I don’t think intuition is magic. [laughs] On

the other hand, I think you can—I would disagree with that in that I think you can

examine, probe, for the nature of a person’s musical intuition.

FL: Yeah, I had a question about it; you already brought it up.

JB: Yeah, and I think sometimes intuition—I said this once, and somebody got very

upset. I think the word and the notion is sometimes used as a garbage can. [laughs] I

mean, you attribute something to intuition, and then you don’t have to say any more.

FL: Right.

JB: But I think, as far as education and learning and all of that is concerned, it’s critical to

try to understand what it is that people know how to do without anybody teaching it

to them.

FL: Mm-hm. So, Sessions wrote music that could be described as challenging to listen to,

and he saw it as coming from a creative vision, not to be difficult or avant-garde for

its own sake. Did he talk about the issues of music such as his, and even among

musicians, being able to, even musicians found that very challenging. Did he talk

about those kinds of issues, and that whole process, and what was happening with

those kinds of composers?

JB: Not per se, because he was—just as he was in the Eroica Symphony, he was in the

piece. And the fact that it was difficult, well, the Eroica Symphony’s difficult, too.

And I think that was more the approach. It’s just that when we listen to Beethoven we

don’t hear why it’s difficult, or it doesn’t seem to be difficult, because we’re not really

hearing what’s going on, all that’s going on in the piece. In fact, you know, when

people ask me what I do, one of the things I say quick is, “I’m interested in helping

people to hear the complexity in a complex piece of music.” [laughs] So, the fact that

people have trouble with it is simply because they’re listening to style, if you want!

[laughs] I mean, they’re waiting for the resolution; they’re waiting for the

chromaticism to resolve, and they’re missing the whole point.

FL: Did he talk about serialism and [Anton] Webern [1883-1945], but also later on, Luigi

Nono [1924-1990] and [Karlheinz] Stockhausen [1928-2007] and [Pierre] Boulez [b.

1925]? Did he talk about that?

JB: Well, he claimed that he wasn’t a twelve-tone composer, and he was—he insisted on

that. But I think his attitude towards it was, the twelve-tone part of it, and doing serial

analysis, and so forth—that wasn’t what was interesting. It was what the piece shares

with complex pieces in any style that was the point. Of course, [laughs] when we did

the Fourth Quartet and then the Bartok Quartet, it was almost as if this was to show

the greatness of Schoenberg and the less greatness of Bartok. But Bartok was already

much better than Stravinsky.

FL: He also had a thing about national style.

28

JB: Wait, I just remembered, we did the Symphony in Three Movements of Stravinsky.

Those were the three pieces.

FL: Is it possible that some of the problem he had with Bartok was the kind of Hungarian-

ness of it?

JB: I don’t think so because we used to talk about the difference between people who

wrote ethnic music, borrowing, in contrast to somewhere the notion of renting a

house instead of living in it. [laughs] But I don’t think, no, I don’t think it was the fact

that he was using folk songs, or something, but it was just—because what’s important

is what people do with their material.

FL: Right. So he had kind of a preference to Schoenberg—?

JB: To Bartok and certainly to Stravinsky. [laughs]

7. Performing contemporary music, visit with Arnold Schoenberg.

(01:42:37–CD2 00:57:17)

FL: Wow. We can’t get through this next topic now, but let’s see what we can do. Your

master’s degree—and we talked about some of the stuff you’ve already done at

Berkeley. You mentioned your master’s degree was on Křenek’s Piano Sonatas, right?

JB: Four Sonatas, yeah.

FL: Okay. Did you also study piano when you were at the university there?

JB: No, not at all. I just played a lot! [laughs]

FL: Was that your first experience playing contemporary music?

JB: Yeah.

FL: Yeah, yeah.

JB: And that was, really Sessions pushed me into that.

FL: How was that for you? Was it something you really wanted to do?

JB: Yeah, oh, I was very excited about learning that music and playing it. And I think the

fact that they were all right there!

FL: Yeah.

JB: So it was really like being—that was where I got the idea that what I wanted to be

was a community musician! [laughs] Because that’s really what I was there. And it

was really—it was the only time when there was a whole group of people, and we

were all involved with this stuff, and I was playing it. Not the only one, of course, but

along with others.

FL: So you played the piano part in Schoenberg’s “Ode to Napoleon” [Bonaparte for

Voice, Piano and String Quartet, op. 41, (1942)] with the Barati Chamber Orchestra in

San Francisco? How did that come about?

JB: Well, we were just talking about that last night. Somebody in the orchestra must have

29

suggested it. I don’t remember how it came about. I was asked if I wanted to do it.

FL: Did you know George Barati?

JB: Well, I think he was around because he was a composer, and he was kind of part of

the crew that, although he was older. And he was playing a lot of the music that

people were composing, so he was—I don’t know, I’m pretty sure I had met him

before. But, you know, the fact that I was playing all of this stuff—

FL: And so you were kind of known out there as a pianist that could do it?

JB: Absolutely, right.

FL: Yeah. George Barati, his dates are 1913 to 1996, he taught cello at Princeton

University and studied with Sessions there.

JB: Right, and so that probably—right, I knew he was a cellist. But that was all a very

funny thing because I was taking a course from David Boyden on the Mozart string

quartets. And the exam was scheduled at the same time as a rehearsal of the “Ode to

Napoleon.” So I asked Boyden if I could take the exam before or after, some other

time. And he said, “You’re going to have to make up your mind whether you’re a

student at the university or you’re a pianist.” [laughs]

FL: [laughs] Wow! Wow! Wow.

JB: Also, I had never played in an orchestra, as an instrumentalist in an orchestra, and that

was a whole new experience.

FL: Wow. Who were some of your other students, colleagues, at the university there? And

did you talk about contemporary music much?

JB: Oh, yeah, we were deep into it all the time!

FL: Yeah.

JB: Leland Smith was probably my best friend. You know, he was at Stanford [Professor

of Music, 1968-1992]? He retired.

FL: Yeah.

JB: But he’s the guy who did score. He and his wife were probably my closest friends.

And then, I don’t know, there was—what’s his name? Rosen—not Charles. Not

Charles—that’s another story. I can’t think of his first name—goodness. [Jerome

Rosen, b. 1921] He’s at U.C. Davis. And then there was—ah, I can’t remember his

name, either, but I’ll think of it. The guy who wrote the music for—he became a

movie composer, and he wrote the music for the James Dean movies, and became

famous for that. [Leonard Rosenman, 1924-2008] I’ll think of his name. So there was

a whole group of people. I was mostly—it was the composers that I was hanging

around with. But it was the first time that I had been around people who were talking

about music, and playing music, and doing all of that. Also Vincent Duckles [1913-

1985, musicologist, music librarian] was a close friend! [laughs]

FL: No kidding! Wow! Wow.

JB: In fact, they kind of adopted me. I gave piano lessons to their kids. And Madeline,

who is now over ninety, his wife, is still very active and very much around. And was

30

involved with the new—there’s a new music building, a new building, a whole music

library building that’s just been opened.

FL: Oh, I heard about that, that’s right.

JB: And it’s dedicated, it’s named after Vincent.

FL: Well, rightfully so.

JB: Yeah.

FL: I know that at various universities among composition students in the past there were

lots of debates about twelve-tone music, and the way that it became kind of

institutionalized. Was that an issue there?

JB: Well, it wasn’t an issue because it was not institutionalized. It was not looked upon as

some kind of panacea. It was—and I don’t think that there, I don’t remember—

certainly none of the pieces that I played were twelve-tone. And students of Sessions

were not writing twelve-tone music.

FL: Yeah.

JB: And that meant that they had to really work hard to find how to be not tonal. They

had to find their own—

FL: Their own voice, yeah.

JB: —voice, or whatever you call it. Yeah, there were a bunch of others, too, whose

names I will come up with eventually.

FL: At your performance of Ode to Napoleon, was Schoenberg there, possibly?

JB: No. No, he was already pretty old. But I did go to see him.

FL: Uh-huh, well tell me about that.

JB: Well, that was also because of David Boyden in a way. I wanted to write my thesis on

the sonata form in atonal music.

FL: Ah-ha.

JB: And David Boyden said that was by definition impossible! [laughs] Well, but there

are all those pieces that are in sonata form! Like, the Lyric Suite [by Alban Berg]

comes to mind.

FL: Yeah.

JB: Okay. So I said, “I’m going to go and ask Schoenberg about it.” So Roger arranged

for me to go and talk to him. And it happened that—I mean, this must have been in

1950, or something like that, ’49 or ’50. And there was a big all-Schoenberg concert

in Los Angeles celebrating his, what, seventy-fifth birthday?

FL: Something like that, yeah.

JB: Right, right, okay. So, I went to the concert, and at the intermission, Nuria, his

daughter, came out on the stage, thanked everybody for coming, and for the concert,

and apologized that her father wasn’t feeling well enough to come. Okay. The next

morning, I went to visit Schnabel—uh, Schoenberg. (They’re all S’s, aren’t they?) I

31

went to visit Schoenberg, and while we were talking, the vacuum cleaner is going all

the time. And finally he apologized, and he said that Ronny, his son, had put Nuria up

to making that speech, that she wasn’t asked to do that, she wasn’t told to do that, and

she shouldn’t have done that! And so she was being punished by having to vacuum

the whole house. [laughs]

FL: [laughs]

JB: Anyhow, he was totally livid at the idea that there couldn’t be sonata form in atonal

music. And then he went off on how horribly his pieces are performed, and that’s why

nobody likes them because the performances are so bad! And he was quite cuckoo. I

mean, he looked wild. And also in the midst of it, Dick Hoffman, who was some way

related to him. Richard Hoffman [b. 1925]?

FL: Uh-huh, oh, the composer?

JB: The composer.

FL: Yeah.

JB: He came every morning and went through the mail and organized things. The mail

arrival was the big event.

FL: Oh yeah, he was kind of an assistant to him?

JB: He was.

FL: And cleaned up his archives after he died and stuff. Yeah, right.

JB: Right, he was there, doing that. So that was the visitation with Schoenberg. After that

I became quite friendly with his daughter, Nuria. We used to play tennis.

FL: So what more did he say about sonata form in atonal music?

JB: Well, he sort of began just railing about everything. But what he said was, it wasn’t a

matter of the tonic and the dominant, but a matter of contrast. And there were lots of

ways to make contrast. And that it was stupid of anybody to think that that was the

essence of sonata form, was the tonal areas—that it was the structural contrast that

was important. So, but then I—

FL: So what did David Boyden say of that, after you came back and reported to him?

JB: Well, I think by that time I was hardly talking to him.

FL: [laughs]

JB: I was through with that. But there was a problem also with Bukofzer, because I didn’t

have enough footnotes, and I said things, and I didn’t say where they came from. This

was after the whole thesis was typed and ready to go, and I’d been working on it, of

course, with Sessions. And Sessions and Bukofzer shared an office. And I always

used to say that if Bukofzer didn’t smoke his cigar, and Roger didn’t smoke his pipe,

so that there was a lot of smoke between them, they would have, I don’t know,

fought! They would have beat each other up, or something!

So, Bukofzer made me put things in like, “Private conversation with the

composer.” Because I had, the whole interest—and that goes back to a question you

32

asked before—but one of the interests that I had in doing it was this change in style.

And the Four Piano Sonatas cover the whole change.

And so I was trying to account for this change in style by what was going on

politically and where he was moving, and what was going on musically, politically.

And Bukhofzer didn’t want to have any of that because I couldn’t document it!

[laughs] So I had to put in these footnotes, and I had to rewrite the thesis. And finally,

and in the meantime, I had gotten the Fulbright and was leaving, and I was finished.

So I had to find somebody to type this new version, quickly. So I ran into Bukhofzer

as she was working on it, and he said, “Well, how’s it going?” And I said, “Oh, she’s

great. She’s really fast.” And he said, “Speed does not ensure accuracy.” [laughs]

FL: [laughs] Wow. So, I think we can end there, and we’ll start with your Fulbright

Scholarship, and studying with Messiaen next time. Then your career at MIT, and lots

of things.

JB: Okay.

FL: Thank you so much for coming today!

JB: Okay, well, it’s all very interesting.

[End of Interview]